Musical Intelligence: Importance and Impacts in Young Children
Did you know that musical intelligence has a greater impact on your child's development than reading?
That music can increase your child's IQ and greatly promote academic success?
Music, present since the very first hand clapping and chanting of our ancestors, has evolved into a sophisticated art, punctuating human history for more than 60,000 years.
It's been a part of our lives since birth: we celebrate the most important activities or occasions in our lives with music. Our daily lives are filled with situations that remind us of rhythms and melodies.
Every lullaby we sing, every moment shared in music, nourishes the soul and shapes the brain of our children. Music is not only a source of pleasure, it is also a driving force for brain development!
You wonder how?
Gottfried Schlaug, a prominent neurologist, revealed in a fascinating study that music is a powerful driver for the development of the gray matter in our brain.
All scientific studies demonstrating the impacts of musical intelligence are available at the end of this article.
For our little explorers, each musical note is a gateway to a universe that stimulates language, sharpens listening skills, strengthens memory, and develops motor skills. It creates countless connections in their brains, allowing children to see and manipulate objects in space and time.
And that's not all! By learning to play an instrument, our children develop a discipline that propels them toward academic success. As E. Glenn Schellenberg of the University of Toronto Mississauga points out, Music is such a rich experience that it can even boost IQ ( Link )!
Super-Parents, let's dive into the world of sound together and offer our children the wonderful gift of musical intelligence.
What is musical intelligence and where does it come from?
Musical intelligence is one of the eight intelligences which make up the Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner.
In his view, IQ assessments do not take into account the diversity of cognitive abilities a child may possess, which will nevertheless influence their path throughout adult life.
Howard Gardner defines intelligence as follows:
A skill or set of abilities that enables a person to solve problems or design a product that is important in a certain cultural context.
He therefore highlights 8 forms of intelligence during his research:
- intelligence verbal / linguistic
- intelligence visual / spatial
- intelligence musical
- intelligence logical-mathematical
- intelligence bodily / kinesthetic
- intelligence intrapersonal
- intelligence interpersonal
- intelligence naturalist
These different forms of intelligence can work together concert (and yes in music even! 😃) but are all independent of each other. They all have the capacity to develop in all children but require stimuli individuals.
Learn more about the Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences .
Regarding Musical Intelligence , Howard Gardner states in his books that in reality we are dealing with a separate intellectual skill , whose function is located in a particular area of the brain. Thus, while linguistic abilities are located “almost” exclusively in the left hemisphere, most musical abilities are concentrated in most people in the right hemisphere.
Howard Gardner cites in his work Jeanne Bamberger, a musician and psychologist from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), who insists on the fact that “musical thinking involves its own rules and limits and cannot be assimilated to simple linguistic or logicomathematical thinking” .
We would indeed be facing a new capacity, a different form of intelligence that should be encouraged from a very young age in human beings.
Howard Gardner even tells us that newborns are naturally predisposed to music and to the elements that define it, such as tone, melody, rhythm...
Musical intelligence is the ability to perceive, distinguish, transform, and express sounds and musical forms. It allows one to create, communicate, and understand meaning through sound. This intelligence includes sensitivity to the rhythms, melodies, and tones of a piece of music. Children may demonstrate musical precocity because they have been exposed to musical instruction or because they were born into a musical family. The more exposure children have, the more their musical intelligence will develop.
Every child naturally possesses some form of musical intelligence and it is up to us, as parents, to use this natural affinity with musical intelligence for the well-being and development of our children.
Music and movement are powerful tools that have been widely used in early childhood education for decades. They promote children's physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development, enhance learning, and help teach new concepts. If a child demonstrates musical intelligence, they are more likely to thrive during lessons that integrate music and movement.
Working on our musical intelligence is therefore an exceptional way of developing our intellectual capacities in the broad sense.
Reading skills
Learning musical notation requires children to “decode,” much like learning to read. These codes are translated into precise motor patterns, also developing motor memory.
Abstract computing capabilities
Abstract calculations also require pattern recognition and sequential logic. Children can better understand mathematical concepts, particularly fractions, by studying measurement and time.
Concentration
Listening, learning music, and practicing require concentration. Children learn to exercise patience and focus better on other subjects.
Fine motor skills
Reproducing a rhythm, touching the keys of a piano, and manipulating maracas develops fine motor skills in a very fun way.
Visual-spatial skills
Music helps to understand and interpret spatial relationships between objects, to facilitate hand-visual coordination, to anticipate and predict sequences in time and space.
Analytical mind
When a child practices music, the brain functions at a heightened level, promoting abstract thinking, analysis, and synthesis.
Memory
Music unconsciously exercises memory. Whether it's when learning music in the broadest sense or even memorizing nursery rhyme lyrics, memorizing a rhythm, or cataloging the tunes of multiple songs.
Language development
Music greatly improves vocabulary retention and the development of language, verbal skills (translating thoughts into sounds).
But How to develop musical intelligence in my child ? See our article on tips and advice.
Fabli's contribution
When discussing child development, music is often cited as a vehicle for intellectual progress and overall growth. Today, thanks to Fabli, young children can explore the musical universe in all its facets: learning games, discovering sounds, stories about composers, immersion in various musical genres, and even creative games. All of these playful offerings offer children an immersive, inventive experience that is perfectly suited to their age.
1. Arouse musical curiosity
THE sound discovery games and introduction to different instruments encourage children to listen to the subtleties of music. The Fabli transforms each exploration into a moment of fascination, where we learn to differentiate sounds, recognize rhythms or associate a timbre with the instrument that produces it. This sensory approach stimulates auditory intelligence and consolidates the foundations of musical intelligence , one of the eight intelligences described by Howard Gardner.
2. Understand the history of music
By proposing stories about composers and anecdotes about musical trends, the Fabli anchors music in its cultural context. Children discover how the greatest composers distinguished themselves, how musical genres emerged and how music has marked different eras. Beyond simple knowledge, it is a great way to develop verbal/linguistic intelligence. (reading, expression) and to stimulate curiosity for other art forms.
3. Encourage creation and self-expression
The Fabli goes further by offering music creation games . Children can try their hand at composing short melodies, playing with rhythms, putting together sound loops... Such activities not only fuel creativity: they contribute to the fine motor skills (manipulation of tactile interfaces, arrangement of sound elements), strengthen the analytical mind (choice of harmonies or logical sequences) and open up a space for personal expression which contributes to self-confidence.
4. Concrete support for academic success
By having fun with music, the child also develops key skills for their schooling: concentration , memory , listening skills And organization . The musical sequences offered by Fabli sometimes require remembering certain instructions or exercising selective attention—exercises that are found in many school subjects. Thus, practicing music through interactive activities helps children progress in areas as varied as reading, mathematics, and oral expression.
5. A fun and accessible environment
The great advantage of the Fabli , that's it inclusive and adaptive dimension . The content is designed to support children in their musical discovery, whatever their level. This accessibility encourages autonomy : the child is free to navigate between games, read stories that interest him or her, and discover musical styles that appeal to him or her. In addition, the device's intuitive handling allows him or her to fully engage in activities without any technical barriers.
Sources / scientific studies confirming the impact of music and its learning on the brain.
We have identified multiple studies that confirm the impact of music on children's brains:
- Music lessons before the age of 7 strengthen brain connections , observes the Department of Psychology at Concordia University, in collaboration with the Neuropsychology Research Unit at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University. This translates into an increase in white matter in the brain's corpus callosum, as well as better performance on visual sensorimotor timing tasks.
- A study carried out A 2015 study by the University of Queensland in Australia suggests that the positive impact of engaging in informal musical activities with your toddler is even greater than that of reading. The benefit for your child is specifically in the areas of acquiring positive social skills, attention regulation, and, to a lesser but significant extent, numeracy. When an adult, usually a parent, invites a child to play musically with them, for example, by improvising a counting song or creating new rhymes to a familiar song, the unique combination of face-to-face interaction, creativity, and sound results in learning reinforced by a positive and empathetic emotional relationship.
- A University of Southern California study published in 2016 reveals that learning a musical instrument accelerates brain development in young children, particularly in areas responsible for sound processing, language development, speech perception, and reading skills. In this study, neuroscientists found that the auditory systems of children who receive musical instruction can accelerate language and reading development.
- A Another study from Boston Children's Hospital suggests that learning an instrument also develops the brain's executive functions, which are coordinated in the frontal lobe of the brain. They allow a child to manage their time and attention, organize their thoughts, and regulate their behavior. These skills are important for success in school and in adult life.
- A 10-year study of 25,000 students shows that playing music improves scores on standardized college entrance tests and reading proficiency exams (Source: James Catterall, UCLA, 1997 ).
- High school music students outperform their peers on the math and verbal portions of the U.S. college admissions exam (Profile of SAT and Achievement Test Takers, The College Board, compiled by the Conference of Music Educators, 2001 + Report from the “American for the Arts ”).
- The IQ of young students who received nine months of weekly piano or singing training increased by nearly three points compared to their untrained peers ( study by E. Glenn Schellenberg , University of Toronto at Mississauga, 2004).
- Shape recognition and mental representation scores improved significantly in students who completed three years of piano training ( study by Dr. Eugenia Costa-Giomi) presented at the National Conference of Music Educators meeting, Phoenix, AZ, 1998).
- A study from Northwestern University concludes that music lessons taken during childhood could benefit your child's brain later in life, even if they don't continue taking lessons as an adult. Researchers found that brain responses to speech are faster in older adults who have taken music lessons, even if they haven't taken them for a long time. The benefits appear to be greater the more music lessons a person took during childhood.
But How to develop musical intelligence in my child ? See <>our article on tips and advice.